


hate is a strong word (but i really, really, really don't like you)

by BookPirate



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-12
Updated: 2017-01-12
Packaged: 2018-09-17 02:42:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9300530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BookPirate/pseuds/BookPirate
Summary: Molly Prewett dislikes Arthur Weasley for what some say is a stupid reason. She's thinking maybe they're right.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Someone on tumblr requested this fic and I kept forgetting to post it up here so tada! I finally remembered!
> 
> Title from that Plain White Ts song

If you asked Arthur Weasley why Molly Prewett hated him, he couldn’t tell you. He honestly doesn’t know, no matter how many times everyone in their year asks him. All he remembers is her glare and icy demeanor the entire time they were paired as partners in Charms.

(Okay, so he  _had_  managed to make the feather they were practicing Wingardium Leviosa on fly up her nose, but he swears she hated him before that.)

He tries to be cordial and polite, he really does, but there’s only so far a one-sided acquaintanceship will go, especially when the person you’re trying to befriend actively dislikes you. So, he learns to avoid sitting next to her and, on the rare occasion they do get paired up, he lets her do whatever she wants and boss him around just so they can get the assignment done. It’s aggravating, but the only thing he can really do.

It’s a shame really, he finds himself thinking one day in their fourth year, because she’s very cute and seems to be a genuinely good person. He doesn’t have many friends, being a Weasley, and Molly Prewett would’ve been a nice friend to have.

* * *

Molly Prewett will never admit this out loud, but internally, she grants that she  _may_  have made a mistake where Arthur Weasley is concerned. 

They first met on the Hogwarts Express, when Arthur had sent her flying with a misplaced elbow. She had spilled  _all_ her chocolate frogs, and he hadn’t even paused on his way down the corridor.

At first, Molly attributed this to his aloof, stuck-up nature, and his holier-than-thou attitude. For three years, she had nursed this grudge, gone out of her way to avoid him with a cold shoulder and, when forced to interact, had attempted to make his life as difficult as possible.

Now that she’s matured a little, however, she’s tempted to say that maybe it wasn’t aloofness that caused Arthur Weasley to not glance back or apologize that day, but actually obliviousness.

She notices him in the quiet moments at breakfast or on the weekends, when he sticks to himself and reads books about or by Muggles, how he’s quiet and unassuming, how he hangs out mostly with himself, and sometimes with his older brothers.

She watches him and sees how bright red he turns when anyone pays him any attention, all gangly limbs and too large ears. She catches herself thinking he’s actually not that bad to look at, before stopping herself with a well-placed glare.

It’s one thing to potentially be wrong, but it’s another thing to find the enemy  _cute_.

Still, she wonders how to bridge this impossible gap she’s set up between them without disrupting the entire social order of their year as they know it with more and more frequency as the school year drags on until she finally admits that it’s time to let go of a somewhat silly grudge.

She finally steels her resolve to ask him how he is at breakfast when a wrench gets thrown in her plans, in the form of two Slytherin boys mocking him in the five minutes between her Transfiguration and Potions classes.

She can see his ears getting redder and redder, as his shoulders begin to hunch up, and she snaps.

“Oi! Leave him alone!” she shouts, shoving the boys. “What’s he ever done to you?”

They blink at her, before one of them rolls his eyes. “Oh, piss off, Prewett. This is none of your business.”

She shoves them again. “I’m  _making_  it my business. Now, will you, stop, or not?”

They’re spared from having to answer, however, as Professor Swift walks by. “Prewett! No shoving! Five points from Gryffindor or detention, you choose.”

“Detention, sir,” Molly mutters, glaring at the floor.

“Me, too, Professor,” Arthur pipes up, from where he’s been standing silently behind her. “It’s my fault.”

Molly glares at him, too, before remembering she’s trying to make herself not do that anymore.

Professor Swift sighs. “Very well, detention for both of you. Meet me in my office at seven. Now, move along, you’re all late for class.”

“You didn’t have to -” Arthur begins to say, but Molly cuts him off.

“Don’t worry about it,” she grunts, glaring at the floor again. “See you at five.”

* * *

Arthur has no idea how to talk about the day he’s just had to his brothers at dinner, so he makes some excuse about needing to finish an essay and eats in the kitchens instead of trying to describe his earlier run in with Molly Prewett. It might be a dramatic precaution to take, but his brothers are like sharks after the scent of blood with his strange feud with her. He’d rather avoid it entirely.

As he eats he makes his mind up to demand answers from her as to what is going on. He thinks he’s been generally polite,  _too_  polite some might say, with her for the past four years, so he definitely deserves some answers at this point.

The questions are burning on the tip of his tongue the entire time Professor Swift tells them they have to tidy the Potions’ store room, but he waits until the Professor has left them to their task to ask them.

“Why did you stick up for me today? And why do you hate me so much? What did I do? What is so -” he immediately blurts out, before she stops him.

“Been holding that in for a while, have you?” she asks him, with an amused look.

“Only four years,” he grumbles, before turning to his section of the shelves.

It’s quiet for a while, and every time he turns his head to look at her she looks like she’s thinking hard, with a furrowed brow and look of concentration.

After twenty minutes, he sighs. “Look -”

“I’m sorry,” she cuts him off again.

He drops the gillyweed he’s holding. “What?”

She glares at him. “I’m sorry, I said. It wasn’t fair to be mad at you for four years.” He continues to gape at her until she rolls her eyes. “Gonna clean up that gillyweed or what?”

“Right,” he mutters, mopping it up as quickly as possible, staying quiet just in case she decides to apologize again, or explain why.

* * *

Molly can feel herself tearing through the skin of her lips in nervousness, the taste of blood on her tongue. She hates admitting she’s wrong about things, but the look on Arthur’s face made her feel worse, so she figures he deserves an explanation.

“The first time I met you,” she begins with no warning, “you knocked me over.” He looks at her in confusion, so she continues, “We were on the train, and you accidentally ran in to me. You didn’t stop to apologize or help me up off the ground.  _All_  my chocolate frogs fell.” She glares at him briefly, before remembering to stop. “Anyways, that’s why.”

He gapes at her again, before bursting into laughter. “That’s so  _stupid_.”

She turns bright red in shame. “Shut up. I really like chocolate frogs.”

He good naturally elbows her after he calms down. “It’s okay, so do I.” He grins down at her, before clearing his throat and turning back to his side of the store room. “How many did you drop?”

“Eighteen,” she tells him, side-eyeing him. “Why?”

The tips of his ears start turning red. “Well, I should probably buy enough to make up for it right?”

She hides her smile to herself. “If you’d like.”

They work in companionable silence for a while, tidying up side by side. She glances at him every once in a while, and finds herself warming up quickly to the boy.

Once they finish, and Professor Swift has let them go, he catches her eye, and gives her a smile. “I’m sorry, by the way.”

“Me, too,” she says, and finds herself meaning it. “But we’re friends now, so it worked out in the end, right?”

He beams. “Friends, yeah. I’d say it worked out fine.”

(It works out even better when they almost get caught snogging behind a tapestry two weeks later, but that’s another story for another time).


End file.
